Mission completed

I have great news for our readers, authors, reviewers and co-editors. We have finally succeeded in being included to PUBMED Central. This means that all articles published starting with the first issue of Dermatology Practical & Conceptual will appear in full in the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature also known as PubMed Central (PMC). This also means that PMC will submit a citation to PubMed as soon as the article is live in PMC. More than three years ago we decided to relaunch the journal formerly known as Dermatopathology: Practical & Conceptual under a different name. When I took over the editorship from Almut Böer-Auer who succeeded A. Bernard Ackerman, founder of the journal in 1995, I knew that I had big shoes to fill. Chances were high that I would stumble. To step out of their shadows I elected to strike a new path: Dermatopathology: Practical & Conceptual became Dermatology Practical & Conceptual. As stated in my editorial in the first issue, the change of the journal’s title intended to express the change in the scope of the journal. Based on the intention to broaden the scope, I decided to include sections dedicated to “Dermatoscopy and skin imaging” and to “Dermatology in primary care.” The other important change was that Dermatology Practical & Conceptual became an open access journal in order to increase its visibility. We started with less than 500 unique visitors (readers) per month in late 2011 and increased the traffic to more than 1300 unique visitors per month in the last four months. Our readers come from 87 different countries. The three most frequently assessed articles were (1) “Nail matrix melanoma: consecutive cases in a general practice” by Rosendahl et al with 2435 unique visitors and 2914 page views, (2) “Histopathology of drug eruptions—general criteria, common patterns, and differential diagnosis” by Weyers and Metze with 1420 unique visitors and 1759 page views and (3) “Pigmented tumor in the nostril” by Jaada et al with 691 unique visitors and 891 page views. I would like to thank all authors who submitted their work to our journal. It demands a pinch of “grandeur” which not everybody can muster to send your excellent work to a journal that currently has no impact factor. I have read every single article and I have learned from each article. It made an impact on me and on our growing community of readers. I also want to thank the referees, the co-editors and the team at Derm101. Without their help the journal would not have succeeded. Now, all this said, I have other important news for you. My mission is completed and it is time for me to move on. After three years of intensive work I think it is time that a new editor take over. My other duties and the expected workload related to the organization of the World Congress of Dermoscopy and Skin Imaging in Vienna in 2015 do not allow me to fulfill my responsibilities as an editor of the journal. The new editor in chief will be appointed in May. The journal approaches exciting times and the tasks of the new editor in chief will be challenging. The next important step is to receive an impact factor for the journal. This needs persistence and quality. In this regard I would ask you to give the new editor the same kind of valuable support that I received from you during the last three years. These years were intensive and satisfying and I am happy that we have accomplished so much. Mission completed